Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Other non-crop areas are buffer strips around the inside perimeter of
your orchard. Certified organic orchard growers generally need to leave
buffer strips between certified land and adjacent uncertified fields, rows,
hedgerows, and roads. The width of the buffer strips will be determined by
your certifying agency and the needs of your individual operation. As a gen-
eral guideline, 30-foot-wide strips should meet most growers' needs. Excep-
tions to this would be if your orchard adjoins a nonorganic orchard where
airblast sprayers or similar equipment are used to apply pesticides, or if it
sits along roadways where nonorganic herbicides and other pesticides are
sprayed. In these cases, you may need wider buffer strips and you should
probably include a dense windbreak to reduce the amount of pesticide spray
that drifts into your orchard. Even if you are not planning to become certi-
fied, creating a buffer strip to protect your fruit trees from pesticide drift is a
good practice. The buffer strips typically serve as roads around the orchard
and provide headlands for turning tractors and other equipment. Make the
headlands wide enough to allow you to easily turn around the largest piece
of equipment you will be using in the orchard.
Planting blocks.
Once you have mapped out the non-crop areas, define the
orchard blocks where each crop will be grown. Draw these blocks in rela-
tion to your already defined orchard boundaries and non-crop areas. These
planting blocks will largely create themselves when you plot out buffer strips
from boundary roads and fences. Every grower's site differs in topography
and shape, and you will need to evaluate your own site to determine how best
to lay out the orchard. For home orchards the trees may simply be spread
out, more or less randomly, through the orchard space.
Lay out the entire planting area first, then divide that area into sections
for different crops or varieties. Add crossroads to the plan to provide access
to the different planting blocks. The road widths will depend on orchard size
and the equipment you will be using. Twenty-foot-wide roads are about the
minimum for small pickup trucks, with 30- to 40-foot-wide interblock roads
being common in large orchards. For large orchards, include enough main
